Too close to predict: White House candidates zero in on critical swing state voters

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump both pushed Tuesday to energize key constituencies that their allies worry might be slipping away. The vice president is looking to reach Black men and the former president is focusing on women.

Harris appeared at a town hall-style event in Detroit hosted by the morning radio program “The Breakfast Club,” featuring Charlamagne Tha God.

“I maintain very strongly America should never pull ourselves away from our responsibility as a world leader,” Harris said in response to a question about using taxpayer dollars to support overseas allies. “That is in the best interest of our national security and each one of us as Americans.”

During a question-and-answer session sponsored by Bloomberg at the Chicago Economic Club Tuesday, former president Trump appeared to dodge a question about speaking with Russia’s president Putin since leaving office.

“I don’t comment on that,” Trump said. “But I will tell you that if I did, it’s a smart thing. If I’m friendly with people, if I can have a relationship with people, that’s a good thing and not a bad thing in terms of a country.”

Journalist Bob Woodward reported in his new book, “War,” that Trump has had as many as seven private phone calls with Putin since leaving office and secretly sent the Russian president COVID-19 test machines during the height of the pandemic.

Trump spokesperson Steve Cheung called the reporting false.

Trump also planned to tape a Fox News Channel town hall featuring an all-female audience moderated by host Harris Faulkner. Trump’s appearance will air on Wednesday, the same day Harris is set to be interviewed by Fox News Channel’s Brett Baier.

In Georgia, more than 250,000 voters cast ballots on Tuesday, the first day of early in-person voting in the southern swing state. Absentee mail-in ballots began to be mailed on Oct. 7.

The in-person turnout far surpassed the 133,000 first day early votes set in 2020, said Gabriel Sterling with the Georgia Secretary of State’s office.

Also Tuesday, a Georgia judge ruled county election officials must certify election results by the deadline set in law and cannot exclude any group of votes from certification even if they suspect error or fraud.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ruled that “no election superintendent (or member of a board of elections and registration) may refuse to certify or abstain from certifying election results under any circumstance.”

While they have the right to inspect the conduct of an election and to review related documents, he wrote, “any delay in receiving such information is not a basis for refusing to certify the election results or abstaining from doing so.”

Georgia law says county election superintendents, which are multimember boards in most counties, “shall” certify election results by 5 p.m. on the Monday after an election - or the Tuesday if Monday is a holiday as it is this year.

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